PAL Version of GTA IV Leaks Out

Word has reached us that a ripped version of the Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 has already been making the rounds at various torrent locations, thanks to the work of a group called iCON. According to additional scuttlebutt, the NTSC (U.S. & Canada) version of GTA IV is said to only be 48 hours behind being available on torrent locations as well for download.

With the release of the title less than 6 days away, the news that a leaked copy of the PAL version of the game has already made its way on to the Internet and that the NTSC version isn’t far behind has to be troubling news for publisher, Rockstar.

Normally, we don’t pay too much attention to these types of stories because they are difficult to confirm, but we can say that we have been seeing “You Tube” clips from the game that have been appearing and are being taken down as fast as they are going up. This does lead us to believe that the leak of GTA IV is real and people are downloading it.

This is not the first time that Rockstar has faced this issue. In fact, the publisher also had Grand Theft Auto San Andreas leaked about a week before the release date, as well. We have not downloaded the 6.32GB file to verify if, in fact, this is legitimate or not, but it is showing up on torrent sites everywhere.

While developers continue to claim that console systems don’t have the piracy problems that the PC has, it seems that piracy of software titles for console systems also is an issue that continues to gain steam. It does seem that many people just lack respect for the hard work and money that software developers put into the development of software and just take the short cut. The reality is that not buying software does more to harm the industry than people think.

With EA still trying to gain control of Rockstar, this leak perhaps could not have come at a worse time. We understand that people are eager to play this title, but this could really hurt the launch of the title with the focus being on the leak prior to release rather than on the game itself. While any publicity is good, we just don’t know if Rockstar will like how this could play out.